by D. P. Prior
“D-d-don’t know what that means?” Nils said. “T-t-tute… Don’t know what it means.”
“Yes or no,” Blightey snapped. “That is all I want to hear. Your life, your entire being, pledged to my service. I will teach you everything. Everything.”
He stood back, placing a hand each side of his skull.
“The things I have seen, the power I have accrued… I would share it. You could be like a god.”
Until you thought I knew too much and shoved a spike up my arse, Nils thought. Yeah, right, that sounds so tempting.
Blightey’s glare was unrelenting, and Nils felt himself shaking with the enormity of the choice.
“Yes or no?” Blightey said again. “Total commitment. Total—”
“Yes!” Nils screamed. “Yes, I will service you—”
“Serve,” Blightey corrected with a dry cackle.
Nils didn’t get it. He felt heat coursing through his cheeks. He knew he’d done wrong, knew he’d been a coward. He should have taken whatever was coming, taken it like a man. All this time with Nameless, and he was still Buck Fargin’s turncoat son. Same old Nils. Same pathetic, yellow, lily-livered, save his own arse Nils, just like he’d been with the Ant-Man. Just like he’d accused Ilesa of being. Just like poor old Silas.
A feeder stepped around his protective silver sphere, staring right into his eyes for a long moment before loping to the edge of the jetty. He must’ve been seeing things. Must’ve gone crazy with fear. He could have sworn the thing gave a roll of its hips before springing deftly onto the floating corpse of one of its kin and then, before plunging into the water, hopping to the next and the next. Shogging things sure did learn fast, he thought, and this one was the quickest learner of the lot.
Blightey was still watching him. Finally the Lich Lord nodded and held out the tip of the Ebon Staff.
Nils felt repelled by the thought of its violating touch, but he knew the time for resistance had passed. He curled his fingers around the shaft, sickened by the malice creeping beneath his skin, but he held on as Blightey used it to pull him to his feet. It felt like a colony of termites had infested his veins.
“Welcome,” Blightey said, “to my family. It is a very select circle, one which demands absolute trust. You must be utterly transparent at all times, and if you think to deceive me, remember how exposed you are. I know your thoughts, Nils. I know your feelings.”
Nils gulped and nodded, but when he tried to release the staff, it once more clung to his hand. Blightey took his other hand and guided it to the twisted black wood.
“There’s something I want you to do for me, Nils,” he said, even as the shadowy disk reappeared beneath their feet. “I want you to be the one to bring our little chase to an end. Are you game?”
Nils didn’t reckon he had much choice. With the weight of a mountain forcing him down into the depths of the Abyss, he broke away from Blightey’s glare and looked mournfully across the lake, to where the last of the dwarves were passing from view.
“What do you want me to do?”
NAMELESS
Ten minutes out from the flooded cavern, the tunnel forked. The stone was rough and blistered from where a passage had been melted by the lava. There were still signs of dwarven activity: a scarolite roundel here and there to divert the magma flow, and sections of wall that had been chiseled back to prepare for fronting with intricate stonework or plaster. It looked like the dwarves of Arnoch had ventured through a vast network of tunnels until they’d emerged beneath the roots of Mount Seraph.
Nameless followed Stupid, who had his head buried in his map, mumbling and muttering to himself.
“Shog!” Stupid said as he walked into a wall—not for the first time. “My nonce, my nonce, my poor ol’ nonce.”
“If I’ve told you once,” Nameless playfully chided.
“I know, I know. Look where I’m going. If only it were so easy for a fool to learn new tricks.”
Cordy, who’d been trailing them at a sullen distance, came up alongside.
“What’s the problem?”
Behind her, Duck and Kal headed up the main body of refugees that trailed back as far as Nameless could see. Thankfully, the cavern lake had afforded them a greater lead over the feeders. Problem was, the people were already exhausted and, if the map was anything to go by, Arnoch was still miles away. They may as well have been trying to get to one of Aethir’s three moons. What choice did they have, though, other than to keep on moving? At least that way, they could hold on to the illusion of hope.
“Left or right?” Nameless asked, peering over Stupid’s shoulder.
The fool examined both sides of his map, turned it round and round, then jabbed a finger at a line drawing of a tangled knot of corridors that doubled back on themselves or terminated in dead ends. Beyond the jumble, there was empty space, and then the main artery resumed until it ended at a sketch of towers and minarets that must have been Arnoch.
“First rule of a labyrinth,” Stupid said. “Always turn left.”
Nameless cocked a look at Cordy. “Left it is, then.”
“But what if it’s the wrong way?” Cordy asked.
“Could be they’re both right.” Stupid fiddled with the bell on his hat. “Except for the one to the left, which isn’t wrong by virtue of it not being right, but nevertheless could be right, despite its direction.”
“Want to send out scouts?” Nameless said.
Cordy drew in her bottom lip and rubbed her beard. “No. Not enough time. We go left.”
Well, that was helpful, Paxy said.
“Shut up, lassie,” Nameless muttered.
“Eh?” Cordy said. “You talking to me?”
“Just thinking out loud.” Nameless tightened his grip on Paxy’s haft, like he meant to throttle her.
“Listen, Nameless,” Cordy said as Stupid started down the left-hand passage. “What happened back there, outside the forge…” She shot a warning look at Duck and Kal and then leaned closer to Nameless’s ear, keeping her voice down. “I don’t want you to think… I mean… Thumil and Marla…” There were no tears in her eyes, just deep frown lines etched into her forehead. “I don’t know how to say this.”
“No need, lassie. You’ve got nothing to explain to me.”
Nameless understood, or so he thought. It was the chase, the fear. It was only natural to seek comfort after such terror, but with everything that had happened back at Arx Gravis…
“Yes, I have,” she said. “I have everything to explain. What you have done for us, what you’re trying to do, is what the old you would have done. Somehow, that you was lost along with your name, but we never forgot, me and Thumil. We three were close. So close. You were family—”
“Yes, and then I murdered everyone. I know. I think about it all the time. The memory of it haunts every nook and cranny of this shogged-up mind.” Nameless rapped his knuckles against the side of his head. “But I don’t know what else to do about it. What do you want from me, Cordy? Should I just hurl myself in among those feeders? Should I cut my wrists? I would, you know, if it could bring them back. I would… I would.”
Cordy lashed out and grabbed a handful of his beard. “Now listen here, you self-pitying shogger. Don’t you say another word, you hear me? Don’t say a shogging word. Just you listen to me, Nameless Dwarf. Don’t you at least owe me that much?”
“Uh, people…” Stupid reappeared at the junction.
“Not now!” Nameless and Cordy shouted in unison.
Stupid held up a hand and bowed till his bell tinkled against the floor.
“Now listen,” Cordy said in a softer voice.
The passageway behind them was filling up with dwarves straining to see what lay ahead. Duck and Kal turned to them and bade them rest up a minute.
“You… are… my friend.” Cordy enunciated each word as if it burned her lips. She held up a finger to stop Nameless from speaking. “No. No. You are my friend, just like you were Thumil’s friend, just like
you were to be Marla’s…” She choked on the mention of her daughter’s name but valiantly carried on. “Just like you were to be Marla’s soul-father. I hate you,” she said, taking him aback. “Gods of Arnoch, I shogging hate you for what you did. Oh, I understand it. I know it wasn’t you. I know it was that evil bastard axe, but I hate you for it nonetheless. But know this, Nameless Dwarf, I love you, too, like a brother. Maybe more, but that can never be. I wish… I wish I hadn’t… you know. But I couldn’t help it, same as you couldn’t with that black axe. Forgive me, and help me to forgive you.”
Nameless stared at her, jaw hanging slack, eyes welling with tears. He cleared his throat and stalled twice as he tried to speak. He reached out a tremulous hand and touched her lightly on the shoulder.
“Thank you, lassie.” Tears flowed freely and snot streamed into his mustache. “Gods, I wish Thumil were here, by my side. I need him now more than I ever did. I’m sorry, Cordy. I’m so, so sorry.”
She embraced him, pulling his head into her breast and allowing his sobs to drench her dress.
His body was racked with shudders, but the musty underground air felt suddenly crisp and quickening to Nameless. With every sob, weight sloughed from his shoulders, and he was filled with a searing purpose. This was not about him, not about his guilt and self-loathing. This was about the people he had almost destroyed. This was about making sure they survived and had the chance to flourish once again.
“I have been an ass, Cordy,” he said. “A stupid, maudlin, shogging ass.”
Cordy held him out at arm’s length, tears now running down her cheeks. When she smiled, it was with the warmth of one who knew him, really knew him deep down to the core. Gods, Thumil had been one lucky dwarf.
“You’ll get no argument from me there, you big musclebound oaf.”
“Musclebound?” Nameless rubbed his bicep and gave a little laugh.
“Save for that gut of yours.”
His hand went straight to his belly. “Gut? What gut?”
Cordy sniggered and shoved him toward Stupid. “Go on with you. We’ve got an entire race to save.”
Nameless gave a mock salute. “Shogging right there, lassie. Shogging right.”
Stupid grabbed him by the arm and led him into the left-hand passage and around a bend.
“Don’t want to worry you or nothing,” the fool said, “but…”
“Shog me,” Nameless cursed. “Gehenna.”
The walls were of polished scarolite, ridged in unsettling organic patterns that looked like they had been formed from black bones, slick with oil.
The passage wound away like a serpent, each twist and turn illuminated by the phosphorescent green flecks in the scarolite. Tributary tunnels joined the main one close to the ceiling, which was twenty feet above. Speckled disks of red and black marked the ground beneath their openings.
“I had no idea we were so deep.” Stupid spoke in a hushed whisper, his fingertips stroking the obsidian surface as if it were a long lost cat.
“We must go back,” Nameless said.
“Or not.” Stupid pointed up ahead.
An amber light winked at them from the far distance, grew momentarily larger, and then drifted off around a corner.
“Wait,” Nameless said as Stupid started after it.
“Too late. They know we are here. Maybe we can use this to our advantage.”
“Don’t see how,” Nameless grumbled, looking back over his shoulder at the sound of footsteps.
Cordy, Duck, and Kal gawped as they set eyes upon the alien corridor. The rest of the refugees were pressing close behind them.
“Word is the feeders have crossed the lake,” Cordy said. “Jaym’s boys say they heard their screeching. We don’t have much time.”
“We should try the right-hand tunnel,” Nameless said.
Cordy shook her head. “Choice has been made. Keep going.”
Hefting the Axe of the Dwarf Lords to his shoulder, Nameless set off after Stupid with the others following a good twenty feet behind.
“Must say, laddie,” Nameless said, “you seem right at home here.”
Stupid snorted then cocked his head. “You know the perils, Nameless Dwarf. You’ve seen more of Gehenna than most.”
“Aye, laddie. Aye, I have, and I don’t cherish the thought of being back here.”
“Oh, the black axe was far, far from here,” Stupid said. “You would have entered from Malkuth.”
“Aye, through the portal beneath the Sanguis Terrae in Arx Gravis.”
The amber light led them like a will-o’-the wisp on a downward gradient until the passageway became a path jutting out over an abyss.
They had reached the edge of a chasm crisscrossed with scarolite walkways that spanned the void like a spider’s web on every conceivable plane. Deep, deep below in the inky darkness, reddish lights, dotted about like stars in the night sky, gave off a misty glow. There were hundreds upon hundreds of them, as far as the eye could see.
“A homunculus city,” Stupid said with no glee in his voice.
“All we need.”
“Keep going?”
“Keep going, laddie. We’ve come too far to turn back now, and those feeders are right on our arses.”
As they stepped out over the void, cramps took hold of Nameless’s stomach. It wasn’t the height or the precariousness of their path—Arx Gravis had walkways of its own spanning the ravine that housed it—but rather it was a sense of wrongness. Nothing he could put his finger on, just an eerie topsy-turvy sensation that made it seem like the world had been inside-outed in some intangible way.
The amber light winked three times and then vanished.
“Hmm,” Stupid said. “Will you come into my parlor said the spider to the fly?”
“What’s that?” Nameless said.
“Nothing. Just an old poem from another place, another time.”
Nameless frowned. “Are you really an idiot, or do you know more than you’re letting on?”
“A bit of both,” Stupid said. “But mostly the former.”
“Well, just stay on the same level,” Nameless said, casting a glance at the walkways above and below, “and keep going straight. Last thing we want is to lose our bearings.”
“My bearings aren’t for losing,” Stupid said with a glint of mischief in his eyes. Either that, or it was just the reflection from the light-giving green flecks in the scarolite.
The survivors of Arx Gravis followed them onto the walkway like a column of ants, trailing away into the darkness.
Nameless guessed that was a good thing. If worst came to worst, they could follow the line back like a ball of twine to find their way out, although he was starting to get the feeling that the chasm was without bounds, whereas what was left of the dwarves didn’t make for a lot of thread.
They processed in hushed awe across the yawning abyss until it seemed they were suspended on slender veins of glowing green, so black was the rest of the scarolite. The dotted red lights of the city below cast only a selfish glow that did not reach the spanning walkways. The expanse seemed unnatural, as endless as space. Mutters abounded about the wrongness of the place, and the aura of dread rising from the dwarves was palpable.
Nameless felt the objections of his Aethir-bred mind to Gehenna’s obstinacy in the face of nature. The echoing march of his people reverberating away into the depths gave time to the thumping of his heart. He kept his breaths long and slow. The hairs at the nape of his neck prickled, and a crawling sensation crept beneath his skin.
And then they came, three homunculi floating silently up from the city on silver disks. They were shorter than dwarves, with gray skin and beady eyes that sparkled beneath craggy brows. There were two men and a woman, all dressed in shimmering tunics that rippled with changing colors and textures. One sported long hair, braided at the neck; the other male wore a tricorn hat, and the woman was perfectly bald, with a glittering red star etched into her forehead.
“Dwarves in Gehe
nna, brother?” the woman said to Stupid. “Is their purpose to conquer, or something else?” She hopped off her disk and circled Nameless, sniffing. “Tainted blood. Hybrids. These are Sektis Gandaw’s creations.”
“Meldings, I’ll grant you,” Stupid said.
The air about him warped and buckled, his features dissolving, his height diminishing. Where once the dwarf fool had stood, there was now an olive-skinned homunculus with hair twisted into gray dreadlocks.
“Abednago,” Nameless said, taking a step back. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Abednago?” the female homunculus said. “The Seditionist?”
Her hand flew to a holster at her hip and came up with a silver-barreled weapon. It reminded Nameless of Shadrak’s pistols.
The weapon began to whir, and sparks danced along its length.
“Wait!” Abednago cried, holding up his hands. “We are fleeing the Lich Lord.”
“Blightey?” The woman narrowed her eyes. She raised the weapon and discharged a stream of blue fire toward the ceiling. It struck a walkway and was absorbed by the scarolite.
The male in the tricorn floated alongside on his disk. “What does he want with you?”
“And why have you brought him here?” the other male asked, rising above Nameless and Abednago.
Duck and Kal joined them, Cordy just behind.
The rest of the dwarves had stopped moving and were murmuring and pointing as hundreds more silver disks drifted up from below.
“Nameless?” Kal said. “What do we do?”
Nameless shushed him with a hand and focused on Abednago. Had the homunculus known where he was leading them, or was he as lost beneath the mountains as everyone else?
“We seek the way to Arnoch,” Abednago said. “Do not oppose us in this. We have a common enemy and very little time.”
“How little?” the woman said.
“Nameless,” Cordy said, casting worried looks back over the waiting dwarves. “We must keep moving.”
“Minutes,” Abednago said. “You must let us pass. Our feud can be resumed once Blightey is thwarted.”